5 rules to get tighten your office cyber security

How many of these rules are you breaking right now?

Yes, we regularly see employees in businesses writing down their valuable passwords on sticky notes (and sometimes even sticking them at the bottom of the monitor).

Our concern here is that if an office space was broken into then criminals would have full access to devices and all of the details which they need to log in and steal valuable information and data!

We recommend using a secure password manager, such as ‘Last Pass‘ which will help your team remember their passwords without putting your entire business at risk.

4. Ensure that your team have unique passwords.

Again, some businesses that we have visited in the past have had a universal log in for all devices (for example, 5 Ipads all with the same unique 4 number code to log in).

Similarly, staff should be encouraged to change their passwords regularly and to select a combination of numbers, letters and symbols – rather than something memorable to them, such as their dogs name or surname.

Phishing emails are essentially a hackers attempt at crafting an email which is aimed to look authentic, with malicious intent to trick the recipient into handing over their personal details (usually bank details).

Often we’ve seen businesses operating with secure PC’s in their office but allowing staff to access their network through personal devices at home.

The danger here is that it’s highly likely that your team’s personal devices have lower grade cyber security in place than your office devices.

End point protection is a possible solution to ensure that each of your users devices are secure and we advise that your team are warned against accessing your network using their personal devices.

We also currently provide services for our clients which ensure that business networks are secure and ‘contained’, rather than

1. Don’t rely on a single back-up point.

We’ve seen businesses in the past who back up their data to a single back up point, such as a hard drive.

Catastrophic results can then arise if a business has its network breached by a cyber criminal. At best business owners with a single back-up point can expect a lengthy delay in getting their data, files and network ‘live’ again, at worse they never get them back.

We create business continuity plans for our clients which include multiple back-up points. The main aim of this is to ensure that our clients are up and running as quickly as possible after a potential breach, because time spent without access to data, files and network is time losing money.